Exploring my experiences with mental illness

Life Support

I love my friends dearly, and I want to do everything I can to help them out. But one of the instincts I find myself constantly fighting against is the desire to try and fix things. It’s a very stereotypically male impulse, to find out that someone has a problem and to want to try and fix it. But with mental problems, often it is just better for all involved parties to just listen and try to talk things out, to process them together. I know that I should be listening, and I try to do so when I can, but I still feel a strong urge to try and fix things – which sometimes tends to show up at very inopportune times.

I also find that I’m not very good at expressing myself or my feelings in person. I can do it fairly well here; I’ve always had an easier time writing things out than I have talking. But it means that a lot of the time, I don’t say what I am thinking or feeling to whoever I am talking to, even if they mean a great deal to me and I want to be more open. This can be problematic, sadly so, because I think it seems like I am trying to conceal things, or that I am untrusting, when in fact I trust my friends implicitly – I just really suck at expressing myself. Even though I recognize it, it is moving past recognition towards actual expression that is catching me up.

I love spending time around my friends, and sometimes that’s just fine. But I wonder if there are things I could be doing to better express myself, or to be a better listener. I know this might be needless worrying, but wanting to be a better friend and support is, I think, kind of necessary, at least for me – it feels weird to me just accepting things as they are, it feels like stagnation and stagnation feels like the first step to things going downhill.

Yeah, I’m weird. But hey, this is a blog about my experiences with mental illness, so if you were expecting normal, you are clearly in the wrong place.